Have you ever noticed that some of the most well-known and charismatic actors' last role is something you'd never expect them to do? Take for example Orson Welles. He was the man responsible for Citizen Kane and yet his last role was the villian from Transformers: The Movie. Roddy McDowall, the classy ape from Planet Of The Apes and his last role was a classy ANT from A Bug's Life. Raul Julia, who starred in classics such as Kiss Of The Spider Woman, starred as an over-the-top dictator in a movie based off of a video game with too many sequels.

M. Bison can rest with ease knowing his plan will definately not go wrong by the end of the movie.

Raul Julia as M. Bison? Really? Why don't you have Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Mario while you're at it? Well, despite the....odd villian casting, the 1994 film Street Fighter is only luke-warm. It tries to be campy, but it's boring most of the times, with only it's clourful look and cool cinematography to pull it through it's running time.

WHAT'S IT ABOUT?

The movie is about a elite team lead by Colonel Guile (Van Damme), who must defeat the evil forces of the evil M. Bison (Julia), who has taken dozens of villiagers of "Shadaloo" hostage and gives Guile only 72 hours to respond to his twisted demands. In that time, Guile must find the captives and confront Bison in an electrifying battle for the world.

"Now who wants to go home...and who wants to go get themselves killed with ME?"

Chun-Li's reaction to the recent Street Fighter remake.

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT?

This is a very cool looking movie, thanks to Capcom's co-operation. This certainly feels like a Street Fighter movie. The characters do resemble their video-game counterparts, the locations are top-notch, and the look is bright and colourful.

My God, they're turning him into Tommy Wiseau!

WHAT'S BAD ABOUT IT?

Everything else.

Colonel Guile is supposed to be the main character, but there are two problems with that. One, he's barely in the movie, and two, he's extremely unlikable. He doesn't co-operate with anyone, he doesn't have a backstory that tells us why he hates Bison so much (aside from being him being a warlord), and he basically has no emotion in his voice aside from commanding.

The characters are extremely flat in this movie. Probably every character from the game is in this, but they're only given brief introductions, then have no time to develop into anything else, with the exception of Chun-Li, attempting to kill M. Bison because he killed her father. But even with that, that's not established until near the end of the movie!

Finally, it's boring. The dialogue isn't campy enough, the fight scenes are poorly done, and the story is stretched out like Play-Doh. Guile is given 3 days to save the hostages, but not much happens after that. It might've been better if it were given more campy dialogue or a jucier plot, but the only juicy stuff in the movie is near the end, when the heroes start to save the hostages, but even that takes it's sweet-ass time!

When did this turn into Double Dragon?

We have a title card!

BOTTOM LINE:

This film is no Super Mario Bros. (though to some people, that's like saying Battlefield Earth isn't as good as Cool As Ice). It's boring, not campy enough, and it's only buoyed by Julia's performance and the pumped-up finale that certainly got my attention. But I will give the film credit...it's a thousand times better than Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Of COURSE!

OVERALL SCORE:

2.5/5

GAME OVAAAHHH!!!!!

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I Liked this movie a little more than Mortal Kombat. Van Damme acted just like i'd expect a US soldier to act. Too bad how they portrayed Ryu and Ken though, but i liked Sagat.And it gave you an easy way to piss off Kylie Minouge if she ever drops into your town.

For some reason, the only part that's ever stuck with me since I saw it in the theater was when E. Honda talks about Sumo's being able to send their minds away to another place to help them deal with pain. Random, but mystical.

This is probably over-stated, but another problem with Van Damme's casting as Col. Guile was the fact that while his character is an American Air Force hero, he makes no effort to hide or mask his thick Belgian accent. I could never get over that, but I nonetheless remain a pretty big Van Damme fan and I still consider this movie one of my favorite bad films overall.